Garment hangers of the type having a clamp structure at each end of a generally horizontally oriented support bar are well known. The clamp structures of such hangers may be formed separately from the support bar or integrally with the support bar, and variations of both types have been successfully used. Recently there appears to be a trend to utilize the integrally formed type since, among other reasons, the main portion of the hanger and the clamp structure can be formed in a single forming operation, usually molding, with concomitant cost advantages. Although the invention is adaptable to garment hangers in which the clamp structure is both integrally and separately formed, this invention will be described in conjunction with the type of hanger in which the clamp structure is integrally formed with the balance of the hanger since the deficiency which this invention overcomes appears to be most pronounced in this type of hanger.
Usually the clamp structure or structures of the hanger consist of a pair of clamp jaws which are relatively movable away from one another to provide an open maw capable of receiving an article of clothing to be suspended, initially for display and thereafter for storage, and toward one another to frictionally grip and retain the garment to the hanger for suspension. Although plastic, with its well known characteristic of tending to return to its formed shape, makes possible the generation of forces which resist the opening of the jaws, and thus the application of frictional gripping forces to the garment to be suspended, as a practical matter the jaws must be so thick or hefty that it is inconvenient to open the jaws by the human hand preparatory to inserting a garment to be gripped therein. Even with the use of substantial material in the formation of the jaws, there is still the problem, in use, of unintended opening of one of the jaws due to unusually rough handling. And when the jaw clamps are formed with a living hinge at their bases, there is of course no resistance to jaw separation; indeed, in such structures the jaws are molded in an open condition to which they tend to return in the absence of closing forces applied thereto.
As a consequence, garment hangers of the foregoing description are nearly invariably supplied with a jaw clamp retainer assembly, the purpose of which is to ensure that the jaws exert and maintain a frictional gripping force on a garment with respect to which the two halves of the jaw clamp have been placed in contact.
Such clamp retainers have taken a myriad of forms, many of which are well known in the art. One form is a generally inverted U-shaped retainer which fits over the outside of the jaw clamps after the jaw clamps have had a garment inserted therein. The U-shaped retainer is preferably formed so that, although it slips easily over the garment gripping jaw clamp, it must be forced open against the resistance of the material from which it is composed in order to release the retaining pressure it exerts on the jaw clamp. Such inverted U-shaped clamp retainers may be separately formed with respect to the balance of the garment hanger, or integrally formed with the hanger, and this invention is applicable to both types.
There is, however, a deficiency in the inverted U-shaped type clamp retainers which is common to both the separately formed and integrally formed types, and that is the dimensional change which occurs in the clamp retainer over time, no matter how well made and proportioned such structure may be initially. Specifically, and speaking primarily in regard to the plastics which are today the plastics of choice in the garment hanger industry, the clamp retainers nearly invariably loosen due to plastic creep which, it is believed, is an attribute common to all of said hangers. The phenomena of creep (which differs from the above mentioned plastic memory characteristic) is a vexing one in that if the hanger designer anticipates the phenomena and designs sufficiently small clearances to ensure that a frictional gripping force is maintained on the jaw clamp with the passage of time, the clearance will usually be so small that it is difficult and tiring to the human operator to work with, and therefore impractical. On the other hand, if the hanger designer ignores the creep phenomena, it is a near certainty that the clamp retainer, and therefore the clamp structure, will go oversize after a period of time with resultant dissatisfaction on the part of the retail merchant who displays garments for sale, and the consumer who expects that his clothes hung on the hanger which he acquired with the purchase of the garment will remain on the garment hanger as it hangs in his closet. An example of the above described deficiency is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,706. To date, no satisfactory solution to the creep problem, particularly in hangers of the type in which the clamp retainer is integrally associated with the clamp structure, has been found.